I’m going out on Saturday and will be staying away from home until Sunday afternoon. This is great, actually. The purpose for me being a dirty stop-out is a visit to the Sapphic Valley that is home to the hippy lesbian enclave of Hebden Bridge – or Valley of the Vag, as it’s become known – to celebrate a 40th birthday. What with one thing and another, it’s wiser to stay over at my friend’s place than to drive back a) late, or b) pissed out of my head.

Fun times will be had, but not by the little dog: it’s just not practical to take him over there on this occasion.

He’s burnt his bridges as far as staying at his auntie’s goes. Besides, it’s far too dangerous for him to stay there unprotected with killer Skippy waiting to get him. He’s too bouncy for my folks to look after him for any more than a few hours, and an overnight stay there is out of the question. I was going to phone the local boarding kennels tomorrow to book him in there, but a lightbulb moment illuminated my thinking and I thought: “Alan!”

Rocky gets on well with just about everybody, most people like him, even my dog-hating brother, so I gave it a go. He agreed! It’s going to be interesting for them all because of Molly, the little cat, but it’ll be fine. I can tell that my brother is taking this responsibility very seriously, there have been a number of text messages going between the two of us to iron out the plan with military precision.

“Will you bring food?”
“Yes.”

“Does he have his own bed?”
“Yes, but he prefers to sleep with humans and have a cuddle.”

“Molly sleeps with me! And Jane’s just changed the bedding, she doesn’t even like the cat being on there.”
“I’ll bath him and bring his blankie to put on the bed, he doesn’t moult.”

“What time will you bring him?”
“How about I drop him off at mum’s and you pick him up from there?”

Other tips: take his collar off; let him sleep on the bed; ignore his snoring; when he wakes up, he WILL need a wee, so be prepared to get up sharpish to let him out.

Actually, I’ve noticed that he’s not snoring now that I’ve started sleeping with the window open again. Hmmm. What with his snoring and my sinus problems, maybe there’s something toxic in here that’s asphyxiating us. Perhaps we’re just asphyxiating each other.

It’s that special time in his sleep cycle when he starts dreaming. His breaths sharpen, his toes start twitching. Any minute now he’s going to start running and barking (in his dreams), this will be manifested with little whimpers and excessive movement of all his feet. Here we go! I wonder if I do the same.

There’s nothing nicer than taking the little dog out on a walk in the sunshine and letting him off his lead to go running free in a wide open space. Like most dogs, he spends much of the time exploring and sniffing the environment to see who has gone before him and also to check if his scent still remains from his previous visit. This is essentially checking his wee-mail, seeing who’s left him a message and replying to theirs.

He’s not interesting in balls or sticks, he doesn’t stay beside me, he just likes to run and sniff. The ultimate, the absolute BEST, is encountering other dogs. He sees them approaching, flattens himself to the ground and shuffles along until he’s within a quick jump of them, and then the sniffing really begins in earnest.

Dogs are social animals, they are pack animals, they love to see other dogs and have a sniff, a bit of a chase, maybe even attempt a little bit of bum rape. Generally though, they love encounters with others and none of them find my little feller’s exuberance particularly worrying. The bigger ones just stand on him to put him in his place, terriers are happy sniff along and have a bit of a chase. When it’s time to walk on, I just move ahead, he says his goodbyes and comes with me.

Today’s walk was lovely. The day was crisp and sunny and we embarked on a full circuit of the woods. As we started our homeward stretch, there was a couple with a dog not too far away. Rocky started his run towards them, they stopped and put their dog on its lead, the woman then shouted over to me: “Can you call your dog back?”

Well, I certainly can call him back, but given the choice between another dog who he’s never seen and me, who he sees every day, there was only going be one winner. He approached the dog, and had a good sniff. Its owners were really pissed off with me, but I was indignant and annoyed at their attitude. They have a dog, they take it for a walk where loads of others take theirs, then instead of allowing it to be a dog and socialise with others, they stick it on its lead when they see another dog and get annoyed at other dogs (and their owners) for doing what dogs do.

You know what, miserable fucktards? Fuck you to hell with a spiky stick. And for good measure, die on fire.

The secret life of smokers
For the sake of convenience, familiarity and better NHS services, I use my parents’ address for my GP registration. I tried to be honest and change my address with them, but their services don’t stretch over the local authority boundary between Salford and Bolton.

This brings another benefit in that when I get a prescription from my doctor, I can visit the adjoining pharmacy… and we know who works there.

The downside is that all my health-related correspondence gets delivered to my mum and dad’s place. So I get nagged for not going for smear tests, questioned about mysterious hospital appointments and the content about other letters.

Today saw the arrival of the copy letter that was sent to my GP following my consultation at the hospital the other week. I opened it and didn’t have to read it before the words “smokes 10 cigarettes per day” leapt out of the page at me. Normally I’d leave these letters at my folks’, they’re not really of any interest to me once I’ve read them, but today, I kept my beady eyes on the envelope to make sure my mum didn’t go anywhere near it, until I could safely ensure its exit from the property.

I keep having to remind myself that I’m 42 and that Mum probably knows anyway, but admitting to being a smoker to her would be a gaziliion times worse than coming out. It’s not going to happen. The only reason I’m scared of getting lung cancer is because she’d find out I am a smoker.

So kids, let that being a warning to you. Don’t start smoking if your parents give a rats ass about you. It’s just not worth it. It really isn’t.

Weekends used to be so full of joy. It was at the weekend that I’d be reunited with my then partner after spending the weeks apart. That all stopped when the relationship was assassinated and it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to do anything other than sleep on Saturdays and Sundays since my world was ripped apart a year ago.

Things have changed of late though with my surprisingly buoyant mood, and the prospect of doing stuff no longer fills me with dread. The opposite is now true and, while I still relish my Saturday and Sunday lie-ins with coffee and iPad, I find myself thinking of activities to fill my time. I’d be kidding myself if I thought this was down to anything other than my medication becoming more effective since I stopped drinking again, but I’ll take it, whatever the reason.

Singledom is finally suiting me and although I wouldn’t go as far as to proclaim that I’m single and happy, I am single and not absolutely fucking miserable. At last. The grieving process might be coming to an end at last and I can start rebuilding.

This all means that, whereas a few months ago, I’d shirk any opportunity to “do stuff”, I’m currently more inclined to accept people’s offers than I have been for a long time. So this brings me to this weekend when, despite domestic worries with Mother’s continued hospital stay, I went up to visit friends in the Lake District. Who in their right mind would refuse an offer to spend some time in such a beautiful part of the world with people whose company is, for want of a better word, charming? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to spend time with people who provide wonderful hospitality and the freedom to say cunt as much as you like? You certainly don’t get that on Ward B6 at Hope Hospital.

So, on this particular November Saturday morning, me and the Little Dog packed ourselves up and hit the motorway for the two hour drive to fresh air, mountains, lakes… and cunts.

My friends currently live in a converted barn at the back of which are some fells. And on the fells there are sheep. When I’d visited previously, the sheep roamed up to their back door, being stupid and regularly running into the part-finished fence that would separate them from the house if ONLY it was completed. The sheep weren’t there yesterday afternoon, so the little dog was allowed to run around up the hill for a while to stretch his legs. Impeccably behaved, he returned to me immediately, twice.

The evening was lovely, I treated myself to quite a few glasses of wine and even some port before retiring pleasantly drunk as the witching hour passed past passed. Woken by Rocky’s full bladder at 9, I got up and let him out of the back door, assured by a) the lack of sheep and b) his behaviour the previous afternoon.

If there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain about the little dog, it’s his predictable unpredictability. This morning the mood took him to do a runner up the hillside where, I discovered to my horror and his delight, there were sheep after all. So he chased them, very well actually: I’m sure with a little bit of training (ha, ha, ha), he could be a sheep dog. As it was, however, he simply chased them further and further up the hillside. While he managed to keep the flock together admirably, I’m not sure the farmer would have appreciated his skill if he’d have seen him. Tempting as it was to leave him to and return to the warm kitchen and coffee, awaiting the gunshot, I stayed and kept an eye on him, calling in vain for over thirty minutes for him to return. He came back, then ran off again. He came back, then went to stare at the neighbours through their kitchen window. He was eventually trapped by some skilful howling, which has the strange power of making him stand still and join in.

So, I got the dog back *sighs* and he lives on to continue being an embarrassment to me and a danger to himself.

The little cunt.